Bioinspired sweat-resistant wearable triboelectric nanogenerator for movement monitoring during exercise

Regular exercise plays an important role in remedying body suboptimal health status and releasing daily stress. Herein, we proposed a bioinspired sweat-resistant wearable triboelectric nanogenearator (BSRW-TENG) for movement monitoring during exercise. The BSRW-TENG consists of two superhydrophobic and self-cleaning triboelectric layers (elastic resin and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)), which featured the hierarchical micro/nanostructures replicated from lotus leaf. The bioinspired micro/nanostructures not only realized a 2-fold output increase of the BSRW-TENG, but also offered the BSRW-TENG with excellent contamination and humidity resistant properties that constitute the sweat-resistance. After saline (0.9%) dripped on and evaporated, the output of the BSRW-TENG remained the same while that of the flat-TENG decreased by 41% due to salt contamination on the triboelectric surfaces. Besides, the BSRW-TENG demonstrated excellent humidity-resistance with only 11% output reduction as the relative humidity increased from 10% to 80%, while the flat-TENG decreased by 54%. The sweat-resistant ability was further verified under extreme harsh conditions including complete surface contamination and ultra-humid water spraying. Finally, various exercise movements including dumbbell biceps curl, leg curl and running were successfully monitored by the BSRW-TENG with stable performance before and after sweating. The proposed BSRW-TENG has huge potential in low-cost personal exercise monitoring and athletes’ training analysis.